Hurricane: Communication, Evacuation

If a hurricane hits here, and we have no electricity, how are we going to be able to communicate with the outside world?

No electricity = no computer. (unless you have a generator or inverter.)

We won’t have our computers to see the internet.



And whats worse, we won’t have our computerized lists of friends, family, ward lists, hospitals, or any other information. Before the hurricane hits, you need to print off all your important phone numbers and address lists.

Email your friends and family with your tentative plans. If there is a chance you will be evacuating, email or call and tell your friends and family so they will know. You might not be able to tell them later.

Pay your bills online ahead of time.

No electricity=no cell phone.
Your cell phone’s battery will go dead eventually. You need to get all your phone numbers off of it, in case you can use someone else’s home phone with a cord.

Charge cell phone ahead of time or plug it into an inverter.
Be aware that if the cell phone towers are blown down in the storm, you won’t have any coverage even if it is charged.




Cord phones usually work when the power is out. If the cell phone towers are down, you will be happy if you have one of these dinosaurs, a home phone with a cord (not a cordless phone). These don’t need any electricity to work.




How can we get information when the power is out? There will be no electricity to power a TV or radio.
It is important to buy a radio that uses batteries or some other source of power. This one has a solar panel on the top and a crank on the back, and cost about $15.

Plug a TV into the car inverter.
If you have a small TV that is new enough to use digital signals, buy an antenna for it and plug it into the inverter in the car. We loved our little TV during Fran, I went out to the car and watched it many times during the day we had no power.

Become a HAM radio operator. If you really want to know what is going on, train to become a Ham operator and buy a short wave radio. We have many people in the stake who can help you with this.

If you have to evacuate: You won’t have a computer to print out Google maps, so be sure you have some good maps, or print them from the internet ahead of time. You might need alternate routes. Also, be aware that the roads may be completely jammed.

Have a full tank of gas and plenty of food.

If you go to a Red Cross shelter, they will provide you with the bare minimum. It is much better to bring all your own necessities of life.

After the hurricane passes, what things do you need to be aware of?




A great number of the deaths in hurricanes come from drowning. Do not drive on roads that are covered with water. Several inches can float a car and sweep you away.

Signs may be blown down. After Hurricane Hugo, my friend drove from here to Florida, and she said there wasn’t a single road sign left in South Carolina. You’ll need to know how to get where you are going.

Boredom will set in. You might be without power for days. Its good to have some entertainment for the kids, they will be bonkers without the TV and computer.

Final comments:
Please know that when disaster strikes, you will be thankful for ANYTHING that you did to prepare. Even basic preparations can relieve suffering and save lives.

The Lord has lovingly commanded us to “prepare every needful thing” (see D&C 109:8) so that, should adversity come, we can care for ourselves and our neighbors and support bishops as they care for others.

"We encourage members world-wide to prepare for adversity in life by having a basic supply of food and water and some money in savings.
"We ask that you be wise as you store food and water and build your savings.

—The First Presidency, All Is Safely Gathered In: Family Home Storage, Feb. 2007, 1

By following the prophet and apostles, and preparing for adversity, we will be blessed and we can bless others.
It is time to prepare.

(End of Relief Society presentation on Hurricane Preparation for Morrisville Ward, Aug. 5, 2010)

Possibility We Won't Have Water After a Hurricane

When planning for a hurricane, we have to plan for the worst-case scenario, so what will you do if there is no water coming out of your faucet, or if the water is contaminated?

If you have a well, the water is pumped up with an electric pump. So no electricity = no water.

If you have a septic tank, and it is uphill from your house, the sewage is pumped uphill with an electric pump, so you wouldn’t be able to flush at all. For you, no electricity = no flushing.

For those of us on city water, if the water treatment plant gets flooded, the water will be contaminated.

During Fran, my house and my friend’s houses had water, but the city of Zebulon did not.



You need to store water.

Buy water or store it in clean containers. You can buy water or wash out sodapop or juice bottles and fill them with tap water.

Our city water is chlorinated, so provident living.org says you don’t have to add bleach or anything to it.

"If water comes directly from a good, pretreated source, then no additional purification is needed; otherwise, pretreat water before use. Store water in sturdy, leak-proof, breakage-resistant containers. Consider using plastic bottles commonly used for juices and soft drinks."

Be sure to store at least 1 gallon per person per day for cooking and drinking, plus 1 gallon per person per day for washing. That equals 2 gallons per person per day.

For Wayne and I and Tara and Zac for 9 days, that is 72 gal. (4 people x 2 gallons per day x 9 days = 72 gallons.)

(Our general authorities have suggested that we should have 2 weeks of water stored, I just used 9 days as the amount we might need after a hurricane.)

Where to store water?
Where can I store 72 gallons of water? I just store it all over my house. There’s a little space behind my sofa where the drapes hang. I can store 50 bottles behind there, which equals 25 gallons.



And all around the edge of my master bedroom closet, I have put bottles under the clothing. I can store 38 bottles in there, that is 19 gallons. That is 44 gallons just in those two places. Plus I have them hidden in a lot more places too.

Cooking, Laundry, Lighting with No Power

If we are without power because of a hurricane, how are you going to survive?

Keep the fridge closed.
The fridge and freezer will stay cold longer if you don’t open it. Make sure you open it as few times as you can. Also, eat all the refrigerated and frozen food as fast as you can.




Store paper products.
You don’t want to be doing dishes or laundry without power or water, so store enough paper plates, paper towels to see you through.




Have a manual can opener.
Of course your electric can opener won’t work.

Store foods that are easy to prepare or ready to eat, that don’t need refrigeration, to last at least 3 days.

Store baby supplies. Make sure you have enough formula, diapers for your baby, also foods that your small children will eat.

Cook on a grill.
You need to get some way to cook your food. You can get some sort of grill or hibachi to cook outdoors.

Buy fuel and matches.
You could cook with charcoal. You will need lighter fluid and matches, or get MatchLight charcoal and it will light without lighter fluid. Our grill uses a big tank of propane, and our camping stoves use little cans of propane.

Laundry.
You can just wash things out by hand in the sink, or you can buy a regular toilet plunger and plunge your clothes in a bucket.



Hang clothes up to dry.
Buy some clothespins at the dollar store, and get some rope to hang your clothes out to dry.

Lighting without electricity.
You may be faced with 1-9 nights without light, so you need to figure out ways to create light for your family. How are you going to do that?

Candles. One candle will burn for about 35 hours, but it makes a very dim light, and is unsafe around little children.



Lamp and lamp oil. A lamp with lamp oil can be burned in the house, but again, the flame is dangerous around little children.


Flashlights are safe and bright, but the batteries will only power them for so long.
Be sure you have plenty of batteries.

Glowsticks from the Dollar Store.
Something that is very safe around kids are Glow sticks. The dollar store has some really cute shapes right now. Buy the yellow ones, they make a brighter light.

Before a Hurricane

I prepared this powerpoint presentation for my ward Relief Society meeting Aug. 5. For those of you who didn't attend, I will put the whole thing on my blog over the next few days.





Yes, Hurricanes can hit us here in the Raleigh area. As you can see, Hurricane Fran went right through Raleigh.

During Hurricane Fran in 1996, we had winds of up to 79 mph in Cary. We had a basement then, and we all slept down there. The winds were so bad I felt like the windows would all crash in on us. We heard trees cracking and falling all night. My friend Phyllis had 17 trees down in her yard.

During Fran, people in Cary had no electricity from 1 to 9 days. There were 4.5 million people without power in North Carolina and Virginia.

Right here in Cary, we had 9 inches of rain in one day. The ground floor of Crabtree Mall in Raleigh was completely flooded.

How can you prepare for a hurricane?




You’ll want a way to make some electricity. You can buy a little inverter for $20 that sticks into the cigarette lighter in your car, and you can plug in one item at a time. A more expensive inverter with more wattage or voltage (about $100) could power your microwave or freezer.



Or, you can buy a generator for $1000-$2000. This can run almost everything in your house at once.

Fill up freezer with ice.
When you know a hurricane is coming, fill a bunch of bottles with water and fill up all the empty spaces in your freezer. A fuller freezer stays frozen longer without power.


Be sure and fill up your car with gas. The gas stations might be without power, so you won’t be able to buy gas.

Get your bikes repaired, figure out other ways to travel besides by car.

Do all the laundry and run the dishwasher, and kiss your electricity goodbye, because you’ll be washing by hand for awhile.


Store money in small denominations. When the power is out, some stores will be open for business, but they will only take cash. You’ll be paying more for things if you can’t make the correct change.

Bring in outdoor items.
Don’t underestimate the power of high winds. Even with 79 mph winds, anything left outside becomes a flying projectile. Be sure to store everything in the garage or in the house. If you want to, you can take off your detachable screens, but you’ll want to put them back up so you can open the windows with no air conditioning.

There were thousands of houses with trees through the roof, and unfortunately a few people killed when trees fell on them inside their houses. Sleep downstairs near the center of the house. and don’t sleep near windows, the glass could break.




Park away from trees. If you have big trees in your yard, think of parking your car in a nearby parking lot instead of your driveway.
(continued tomorrow)

Emergency Preparedness on a Budget

Here are the top ten tips for Emergency Preparedness, when you don't have buckets of money to spend. FoodStorageMadeEasy has printed these, courtesy of BeReadyUtah.gov

Be sure to go to this link

http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/2010/07/08/top-10-tips-for-emergency-preparedness-on-a-budget/

because they have lots of comments along with each tip--I'm only posting the 10 tips here.


1. Plan for specific disasters.
2. Create a personalized list.
3. Budget for preparedness items.
4. Save by shopping sales.
5. Store water in safe containers.
6. Request prep items as gifts.
7. Think ahead.
8. Review insurance policies.
9. Update contact records.
10. Trade a night out for prepping.

Wendy Dewitt's Food Storage System

Here is a link to the Daniels Park Ward website, where Wendy Dewitt teaches fabulous classes about food storage. I am linking to her videos #2 and #3.

She explains how she has her food storage down to a science, figured out specifically for what her own family eats. She has taken the ingredients for every recipe, and then figured out the amount to store for 52 weeks. For her, this system works. Of course, I haven't tried her system yet, mine is quite haphazard.

(Video #2 is only a few minutes long, really just an introduction to Video #3.)
http://www.danielsparkward.com/fsv2.aspx

(Video #3)
http://www.danielsparkward.com/fsv3.aspx

Wendy Dewitt has a blog, and on her Nov. 12, 2008 blog post she gives basically her whole presentation.
http://everythingunderthesunblog.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html .

Seven Day Challenge from Food Storage Made Easy

There is a great website that I follow called Food Storage Made Easy. Last year I watched them go through a whole week of false emergencies, by email they would announce a scenario ("There has been a flood and everyone in your city has been told to evacuate their homes for part of the day. You are not sure whether your home, or its contents, will survive the flood.") Their fans tried to live out the scenario, and then reported in to the website and told about their experiences. It was fascinating!

So this year I am going to see if I can do it. I'm warning you, I'm probably going to only do it half-heartedly, if the scenario is way too difficult I'm opting out for that day.

Here is what Food Storage Made Easy says:

Starting on a surprise day … for 7 days, we have a new emergency to survive with only things we already had stored in our house. We use email to communicate each of the day’s challenges so make sure to sign up (on the website). This also indicates your commitment to participating in this year’s challenge! We will notify you by email when the challenge begins!

If you want to read last year's 7-day challenge, plus all of the responses, go to http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/7day/#.html You can read the 7-Day Challenge Findings Report or print it out (16 pages).

If you want to officially sign up, go to their website. But if you want to do it unofficially, all you have to do is check their website each day, because the challenge will be on there as well.

Who wants to participate with me? I would love for you to tell me what you learned so I can put it on this blog.

Ten Reasons for Not Starting Food Storage

There is a great website put together by the Daniels Park Ward in Colorado, which contains nine great videos about food storage given by Wendy Dewitt. I will try to link to them every few days so you will remember to watch them all.

In Video #1, Sister Dewitt talks about the ten main reasons people give for why they don't have food storage. She gives the arguments FOR having food storage.

http://www.danielsparkward.com/fsv1.aspx

Got Matches?

Hurricane season is here. There is always a possibility that we will be out of electricity, so it is a good idea to have plenty of sources of light. I try to collect candles and have them in various rooms in my house.

I had a decorative box with candles inside.




One day it occurred to me, that it was silly to have the candles scattered around my house, if I didn't put matches with them. So now I have tried to hide matches with every candle.

Walton Feed Order

(I don't put last names on this blog. If you need to know where to mail the check or who to make it out to, post a comment and I will respond to you.)

Fall 2010 Walton Order

Dear Morrisville Ward members:
We have less than a month to get our food orders in to the Walton Feed Company, a supplier of food storage items. The deadline is Aug. 22.

Members of our stake have been doing group orders from this company for as long as I have lived here (22 years) so it is a reputable company. However, our stake president wishes to make it clear that the orders are not sponsored or endorsed by the LDS church, that there is no gospel obligation to participate in the order, and that these group orders are not the only way to build food-storage.


Please call or email me with questions. If I cannot answer you, I will refer you to the Apex stake volunteer Walton coordinator, who is Aimee S. But please call me first, so she doesn’t get so many calls.

HOW TO ORDER
There is a printable price list attached to the email you got from our Relief Society secretary, and the Excel Price List, which is easy to use. Just type in your quantities, and it will add everything up for you.

DEADLINE: The order form and a check (made out to _________) is due by Aug. 21 if you mail it to my house or you can bring it to me on Sunday Aug. 22. I do not want to do any money exchanging in the chapel. Please give it to me in an envelope somewhere other than the chapel. I will not look at it until I get home so please make sure all the numbers add up correctly.

YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES: Please realize that if you order, you are responsible to pick up your food when the truck arrives. Walton has orders all along the East Coast. All food arrives on a semi truck in pallets, and the group that ordered has to unload the food, organize it and then pull their orders and get checked off. It usually takes the
average group 1 1/2 hours hours to do the whole process, depending on the size of the order. We have a good system in place, and if followed, it is fairly quick and efficient for the individual. By doing these group orders, we save lots of money on shipping and receive product discounts off Walton Feed's regular retail prices!

DELIVERY: The truck may be here sometime between October and January, they will let us know in plenty of time, don’t worry. But if you are only living here for the summer, don’t order.


New Products:
Walton Feed is now carrying Freeze Dried products...freeze dried fruits, vegetables and shredded cheese. They also have canned meats. Please look at the "Product Info" tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet to find more information on these products. Please note that when comparing prices on freeze dried products from other companies, you need to check the weight of the product. I have noticed that a few companies put in less product than Walton Feed does, sometimes much less.

"Ten Things I wish I had Known" by Kellene Bishop

People are sharing lots of great Preparedness blogs and websites with me. Here is an article from Preparedness Pro, which the author gave permission to share. I think all ten things are things I still need to learn. I have a lot of book-learning, but not any practical experience with any of these.





10 Things I Wish I Had Known
About Food Storage 10 Years Ago
http://preparednesspro.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/10-things-i-wish-i-had-known-about-food-storage-10-years-ago/
By Kellene Bishop

I hate having to learn dumb lessons. Don’t you? As I’ve looked back and realized all the simple tricks and strategies I’ve learned over the last 10 years, I cringe at the thought of all of the money, time, anxiety, and energy I’ve wasted. So I decided to share them with you. You’re sure to learn something in this list! I hope you’ll learn from my mistakes NOW!

Yeast will last indefinitely if stored in your freezer! Outside the freezer it only lasts a year, but inside that freezing climate it lasts over 5 years—so far. When I use it in my bread, I just use it directly from the freezer into my bread dough with no problem. I cringe at the though of all of the yeast I’ve wasted over several years.

I can obtain food storage for FREE or better, and certainly inexpensively, if I just use coupons and an organized system! Now that’s really something to cringe about! I acquired a great deal of my food storage over the years from Costco, but now that I can get name brands for free or dirt cheap elsewhere, I figure I can’t afford to shop at Costco, thanks to coupons! It really IS worth using coupons. I can’t believe I was so pious to think that coupons were “beneath me.”

Cooking with a pressure cooker is a sanity saver. They are fast, nutritious, fuel friendly and SO easy to use! I wish I hadn’t been afraid of them way back when. I’m so grateful that a patient teacher showed me their merits!

Yes, you can CAN MEATS! And it’s the easiest thing in the world to can. Simply stuff the RAW meat into a mason jar with a bit of salt, put the clean lids on it, put the jars in your pressure canner for the recommended period of time, and VOILA! You have BETTER THAN CANNED meat. (The canned stuff you buy has been processed twice.) This meat will be SO tender, so juicy, and will save you a BUNDLE over the canned stuff! (Let’s see. Tastes better. 25% cheaper. Easy to do. Dang! I wish I could relive the last 10 years!)

Cheese wax is a God-send! I can have all of the REAL cheese I want if I simply use cheese wax to preserve it! The cheese will keep for 25 years using this method. Now I’ve got Swiss, Monterey Jack, Colby, Mozzarella, Parmesan, Cheddar, Gouda, Blue Cheese, and even a delicious smoked cheese literally sitting pretty in my food storage! If I had known about cheese wax 10 years ago, I would have made much better use of the cheese sales over the years and never tried that nasty processed stuff.

Preserving eggs that I buy from the store is a snap! After I wrote a lengthy article on egg preservation, I discovered that a quarter cup of warmed mineral oil, coated on my eggs that I buy from the grocery store works great. I then can store them pointed side down in a Styrofoam carton, in a cool, dry place. I don’t have to get the eggs FRESH from a farm. And I don’t have to stack them carefully in anything. How’s that for easy?! I have WHOLE, REAL eggs for up to 9 months! Forget the bran flakes, the paraffin wax, the salt storage. Just some mineral oil is PERFECT. WOW!

I never have to live without yummy chocolate again! I can buy all of the candy bars, Hershey kisses, chocolate chips, peanut M&Ms, Dove chocolates, Lindt chocolates, stuff them in a Mason jar, and with my trusty Food Saver jar attachment, seal their goodness for YEARS! (I like getting them on sale after a holiday) This also works for ANYTHING that doesn’t require refrigeration. When I open the jar years later, they still taste as fresh and yummy as they would have on the day I bought it!

ONLY store what you eat. If I don’t eat it, I won’t eat it, and thus it’s a waste of money. If you can’t eat wheat, DON’T store it. If you can’t stand the taste of powdered milk, store canned milk or soy milk instead. Fortunately I’ve learned to prepare all my oddball foods that weren’t previously in my regular diet, but it sure would have saved me some headaches if I had done things differently. If I store what I eat, the rotation is a cinch!

You can have meals already made, cooked, and stored in a Mason jar! You can bake bread, cake, cookies, casseroles, pudding, and more, in a Mason jar, seal it, and they will last for SEVERAL years! That way you don’t have to figure out how to cook up something every day while you’re enduring a crisis. Do it in comfort now, so you can live in comfort even in the worst of disasters!

Solar ovens are the bomb–not just in an emergency, but every single day the sun shines! I LOVE cooking in mine. I haven’t found anything that I can’t cook in it that doesn’t turn out wonderful! I’ve essentially tripled the life of the fuel that I have stored, since I won’t need to use any of it on cooking anymore except on cloudy or rainy days! Not having to worry or pay for a years supply of fuels such as propane, kerosene, fire wood or isopropyl alcohol, makes the price I would pay for a solar oven well worthwhile. So… like any woman, I bought two!

I’ll be writing more about each of these items later, if I haven’t done so already. The point is food storage can be GLORIOUSLY DELICIOUS. You don’t have to do without and it doesn’t have to be expensive and boring either. One dollar a day, per person, will provide you with absolutely comforting and delightful meals regardless of your challenging circumstances. Enjoy!

Copyright 2009 Preparedness Pro & Kellene Bishop. All rights reserved. You are welcome to repost this information so long as it is credited to Preparedness Pro & Kellene Bishop.

Got Water?

I'm putting together a powerpoint presentation for my ward, and one of the things I will show them is where you can keep your water storage. (If you are willing for me to take photos of your food storage or water storage, please tell me. I won't give your name during the presentation.)

We have some big barrels of water in our garage, but I also want water in smaller quantities since it is easier to use, or to grab in case we ever have to evacuate.

I wash out every juice bottle and every 2-or-3 liter sodapop bottle we use, and fill them with tap water. (Provident Living says chlorinated water is fine to store without doing anything to it.) (And don't use milk cartons, they develop leaks.) Then I hide them all over the house.






Everyone has a sofa. There is usually a little space behind it, and I can easily fit 17 or 34 bottles behind there, depending on if there is one row or two.





We have an armoire in the living room which holds our TV. Since it is placed diagonally in the corner, I put a bunch of bottles in that little corner behind it.

Once, in the 1990's, our water pipe to our house broke so we had no water for a couple of days. In that amount of time, we used up 60 sodapop bottles full of water, just to flush toilets and wash with.

Please, don't throw away another bottle until you have filled up every little nook, you will be thankful for it someday!

(I actually don't have room for any more, but I am saving some now to give to the missionaries in our ward, so they can fill them up and store them at their apartment. It is hurricane season, you know.)


Comment by Marilu:

Good ideas! I use all my soda and juice bottles for water storage. My favorite storage place is my chest freezer, which doesn't currently have a lot of food in it. When I fill them I leave some room and then squeeze until the water level reaches the top. That way the bottle can expand when the water freezes. By filling any empty space in the freezer it uses less energy to keep the food frozen, and if the power goes out the ice will help the food stay frozen longer.
When we go camping I put the two liter bottles in the ice chest. There's no melt water and I can then use the thawed water for washing dishes or the like.